Claude Monet was born on the 14th of November 1840 in Paris. On the 20th of May 1841 he was baptised in the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette as Oscar-Claude but his parents called him Oscar. In 1945 the family Monet moved to Le Havre. His father wanted him to go into the family's ship-chandling and grocery business but Claude was more interested in art. His mother who was a singer supported him to become an painter. He entered the Le Havre secondary school of the arts. Claude started creating caricatures and portraits of acquaintances at age 15 for money. He also met Eugène Boudin who was a painter and encouraged Claude to paint outdoors with special painting techniques. After his mother died he lived with his father and aunt. Just like his mother his aunt Marie-Jeanne Lecadre supported his art career.
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| The Landing State (1868) |
He left Le Havre in 1859 to return to Paris. At the beginning of 1860 he entered the Académie Suisse, located on the Île de la Cité which was directed by Charles Suisse.There he met Camille Pissarro who would become famous just like him. He had to serve for the french army in Algeria in 1861. A long trip for somebody who has been as far as Normandy and Paris only. There he contracted typhoid fever and was allowed to return to Le Havre a year later. His aunt decided to pay money to discharge him from the army to continue his art career again. Then he met the dutch painter Johan Jongkind who was important also like Boudin to influence him. At the end of 1862 he returned to Paris where he met aother well known artists: Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Frédéric Bazille. He traveled to Honfleur which is a brilliant location to paint outdoors. Monet often painted alongside Renoir and Alfred Sisley who where promoting impressionism. In this period he painted his first important painting: "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe". His first painting to be exhibited was "La Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide and Mouth of the Seine at Honfleur".
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| The Jetty at Le Havre, Bad Weather (1870) |
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| Impression, Sunrise (1872) |
He had a relationship with one of his models named Camille Doncieux. They gave birth to a son Jean. In 1870 he married Camille just before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. Therefore he moved to London and the Netherlands to avoid to serve again in the army. Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot exhibited their work independently; they did so under the name the Anonymous Society of Painters. At their first exhibition in 1872 Monet impressed with his works: "Impression, Sunrise", "The Luncheon" and "Boulevard des Capucines". Monet painted landscapes. Later he moved back to figure painting with "Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son".
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| The Luncheon (1872) |
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| Boulevard des Capucines (1973) |
In 1876 Camille his wife became ill and it was becoming worse after their second son Michel was born. It turned out she had uterine cancer. The next year she died. In December 1883 Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir left Paris by train for a short painting trip to Italy. In 1883 he lived in Giverny (France) and later in London where he vistited his son Michel who lived there by then. He married his second wife Alice in 1892. In 1899 he started with his last series of paintings of water lillies. He would work on this series for 20 years of his life.
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| Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son (1875) |
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| Le Grand Canal (1908) |
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| View of the Prins Hendrikkade and the Kromme Waal in Amsterdam (1874) |
In 1908 he moved to Venice with Alice. She died in 1911. This led to a reduction of his paintings. He was very depressed and had troubles with his eyes. Monet died of lung cancer on the 5th of December 1926 at the age of 86 and is buried in the Giverny church cemetery.
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| Water Lillies (1919) |
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Water Lillies (1910)
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